Imam Velitov sentenced to three years in colony

Today, the Moscow District Military Court has found Makhmud Velitov, the Imam of the Moscow “Yardyam” Mosque, guilty of publicly justifying terrorism, and sentenced him to three years in a general-security colony.

The prosecution saw Velitov’s justification of terrorism in his interview and sermon about the Dagestani religious figure Abdullah Gappaev, who was killed in September 2013 and who was, according to investigators, a member of the organization “Hizb ut-Tahrir”, recognized in Russia as a terrorist organization and banned by a court judgement.

"I was not aware that law enforcement bodies had treated Gappaev as a terrorist or a member of the banned ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir’," Velitov said today in his last plea, the Russian Service of the BBC reports.

The verdict will be appealed against, said Dagir Khasavov, a Velitov's advocate, the RIA “Novosti” reports.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.

The bankruptcy manager has assured that in October, after the sale of underground courses, money will appear to pay off the wage debts to former workers of the "Kingcoal" Company, Tatiana Avachova, a member of the protest group, said at a picket in Gukovo. The picketers noted that this was not the first such promise.

The name of the paratrooper, Mikhail Bezelt, who, according to the official data, blew himself up on a mine in Chechnya, has appeared in the list of Donbass casualties. On the whole, the version of the contractor's death during exercises looks plausible, but it's strange that the exercise area had not been inspected by sappers, the law enforcers interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" have noted.

The detention of a witch in Chechnya and the report shown by the "Grozny" ChGTRK (Chechen State TV and Radio Company), where she was criticized by a doctor from the Centre for Islamic Medicine, was treated by some social networks commentators as a return to Middle Ages. Their opponents have supported the persecution of sorcerers in the republic.